Cloud Computing Companies

Cloud computing is now more popular than ever before. I was surprised when my grandma who is not familiar with technical stuffs asked me what cloud computing is. Probably she heard it too much on TV and news. In recent years, a number of start up companies appear in cloud computing arena, and almost all major tech giants joined into the list of cloud computing companies one after another. Immediately below is the list of featured cloud companies. For an alphabetical list of companies, click here.

Featured Cloud Computing Companies

Google
Google changed the way we search and research information. The search giant again changed the way we use our office application with their Google Apps which offer web-based email, calendar and documents for small and medium businesses to large enterprises.

Amazon
Amazon claims itself Earth’s biggest selection. I thought it is also one of the best companies cloud computing providers on Earth. Cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud database, content delivery, payment, monitoring – you name it. If you want a decent cloud service with reasonable price, you can’t afford not to check Amazon.com’s AWS.

Apple
Apple’s approach to cloud computing game is to offer iCloud service to end users. With iCloud, users can sync a variety of contents including but not limited to documents, contacts, email, music, movies, books, etc. to cloud, and access it from any iDevice, Mac & PC. With hundreds of millions of existing loyal customers, iCloud would be a big hit.

Microsoft
Many people thought cloud computing is the threat to Microsoft. Accepting the inconvenient truth, the OS giant is trying to gain ground among the leading companies in cloud computing. Although not yet popular as Amazon’s IaaS and Salesforce.com‘s PaaS, Windows Azure is a rapidly growing PaaS.

Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com offers customer relationship management (CRM) products to enterprise customers. It is one of the fastest growing cloud computing providers offering platform as a service.

Dropbox
Dropbox, Inc. offers cloud storage to end users. It provides a variety of user clients across different mobile and desktop operating systems. With dropbox, users can easily store and share files with others across the internet. Users can also stream audio and videos from their account to mobile clients like iPhone and iPad. Dropbox offers 2GB storage to free users, but those who refer others to join dropbox can gain up to 8GB of free storage. Paid account starts with $9.99/month for 50GB. Dropbox also offer 100GB plan and large quota plan.

SugarSync
SugarSync is a cloud storage company which offers application to syncs documents, photos and other media among multiple computers (both Windows & Mac), and also backs them up on the internet. SugarSync offers 5GB of free cloud storage to each user.

Box.net
Box.net is a cloud storage and cloud content management company. Box.net generously offers 5GB to free user, while the rival Dropbox offers only 2 GB. But Dropbox users can get up to 8GB free if they refer their friends to join Dropbox. Box.net charges $15/month for 500 GB cloud storage while Dropbox charge $9.99 for 50GB. That’s a huge difference. But Dropbox has larger number of clients – Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, Blackberry etc.

Zector
Zector, Inc now owned by Motorola Mobility offers ZumoDrive which is a cloud-based file synchronization and storage service. ZumoDrive is a virtual disk which allows users to store and synchronize their files online between multiple computers. ZumoDrive offers 2 GB storage to free users. Users can also upgrade to paid plans with a monthly subscription fee. The plans range from 10 GB storage to 500 GB.

Rackspace
Rackspace is Texas based cloud computing company which offers high end IT hosting for small to Fortune 100 companies. Fortune magazine featured Rackspace as one of top 100 companies to work in US in 2011.

Zuora
Zuora is a cloud computing company that offers cloud-based billing platforms to online businesses. With Zuora, small to large internet businesses can easily skip the step to develop their own billing systems. Zuora offers Z-commerce which automates pricing and billing of products and services, to other cloud providers.

Joyent
Joyent is a cloud computing company which provides application virtualization. It serves large enterprises like LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe and Kabam with IaaS (Infrastructure as a service)and PaaS (Platform as a service)

rPath
rPath is a cloud computing and application management company. It helps automate application deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

As almost all major tech companies and many start up jumps into cloud computing every week, the above list of cloud providers is far from being complete. If you know cloud computing companies worth adding into the list, please let us know in the comment section below.

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